How cloud computing and analytics enhance efficiency and the Wimbledon

Wimbledon 2011 was the 125th staging of The Championships by
the AELTC since the first tournament in 1877. Throughout its history
and continued growth in popularity, the All England Club has always
managed to retain both the charm of English lawn tennis and keep pace
with the demands of modern sport, global broadcasting and multiplying
digital channels.

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IBM Cloud and AnalyticsCase Study How cloud computing and analytics enhance efficiency and the Wimbledon experience IBM solutions increase engagement with the Wimbledon Tennis Championships For two weeks every year, the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC), a private members’ club with fewer than Overview 150 permanent employees, scales up to stage the Wimbledon Tennis Challenge Championships – one of the world’s biggest and best known Maintaining Wimbledon’s position as the sporting events. world’s premier tennis event by delivering innovative ways to share the excitement of the tournament and engage millions Wimbledon 2011 was the 125th staging of The Championships by of people around the globe. the AELTC since the first tournament in 1877. Throughout its history Solution and continued growth in popularity, the All England Club has always IBM and Wimbledon continue to work managed to retain both the charm of English lawn tennis and keep pace together to create an increasingly reliable, with the demands of modern sport, global broadcasting and multiplying secure and responsive infrastructure to digital channels. keep pace with the demands of an international grand slam tournament. New developments were introduced for During Wimbledon fortnight, the Club accommodates nearly half the 2011 Championships: IBM’s use of a million spectators onsite, while simultaneously meeting the needs cloud computing enabled the addition or deprovision of hardware and software of the world’s sporting media with over three quarters of a billion quickly and as required – saving cost and television viewers on 129 TV channels in 173 countries. energy; IBM’s PointStream increased engagement by providing insight into likely To remain the premier tennis event – the “premier grand slam” – outcomes based on historical data analysis; IBM’s SecondSight – new to Wimbledon the Club understands it needs to build on its already global brand and first at any grand slam tournament and increase its reach to a more diverse audience. Yet in a world of – enabled the real-time tracking of player growing choice and distractions this is a challenge. The Club endeavors movement, including direction, speed and distance covered. to engage its audiences by giving people the ability to share, interact with and connect to The Championships experience as though they were actually there – and to do this in new and exciting ways. The Wimbledon cloud IBM is the Official Information Technology Supplier and Consultant to The Championships and has been developing and managing IT systems for the Club and The Championships since 1990. By handing the hosting and management of The Championships’ data solutions to IBM, the Club benefits from a secure, scalable infrastructure, incorporating the latest technologies. Having developed a deep understanding of the Club’s culture, brand and values over the years, IBM works in collaboration with its executives and the IT Department to ensure the IT strategy and implementation helps the Club meet its business goals.

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IBM Cloud and Analytics One example of this has been IBM’s use of cloud computing at Business Benefits The Championships. This provides the ability to add and deprovision hardware and software quickly as and when demand requires – saving • IBM’s cloud services to the AELTC saved costs and energy. the Club costs and energy as it was able to add or remove hardware and software as demand required. IBM was also able to support the Club’s online and interactive ambitions. • A scalable, robust and secure website During the tournament the website saw a tremendous volume of traffic withstood up to 80,000 attacks each day with 15 million unique visitors and 451 million page views. It also faced of the tournament, had 15 million unique visitors and 451 million page views. up to 80,000 cyber incidents each day. By providing a scalable, robust • Data analytics allowed IBM to collect and secure website, these threats were mitigated, protecting data and data about every game, set and match, ensuring the website was available and responsive 24/7. providing real-time information to the media, spectators, online visitors and Wimbledon.com runs on the IBM SmartCloud™ Enterprise and even the coaches. SmartCloud Enterprise+ infrastructure that allows dynamic provisioning/ • IBM PointStream holds more than 39 million data points enabling insight into deprovisioning of resources, ideal for fluctuating requirements across the key areas for players to work on to the sporting year. This highly optimised environment can cope with increase the potential for winning. rapid increases in users whilst simultaneously lowering the cost per user. • IBM SecondSight is unique in producing This enables Wimbledon to deal with tremendous year-to-year growth real-time statistics which track every move a player makes on the tennis court. in traffic, increased user demand and frees up operational budget for new investments. An innovative feature of the cloud service provided by IBM to Wimbledon is that the same infrastructure also hosts the other three tennis Grand Slams, the Tony Awards in entertainment and the Masters and US Open Golf tournaments. These events have similarly demanding requirements. Sharing in this way creates a significant economy of scale and allows each event to benefit from a world-class infrastructure.Bursting out of the Cloud: plan for the unexpected 60,000,000The combined events produced: 50,000,000• 3.6 million unique views 40,000,000• 9 million visits• 51.2 million page views 30,000,000• 3.2 million HTML scores page downloads 20,000,000• 2.7 million desktop leaderboard and IBM SlamTracker™ downloads 10,000,000 0 Concurrent Desktop Unique users Visits Page views HTML scores users leaderboard Wimbledon.org (Day 1) 1,466,022 3,425,824 30,085,123 144,987 1,257,090 841,631 USOPEN.com (Monday play) 2,149,354 5,655,078 21,182,822 518,906 1,999,617 1,894,477In 2009, the US Open Golf overran due to bad weather. This meant that the IBM infrastructure had to quickly scale up to accommodateboth the start of Wimbledon and the last day of the golf. 2

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IBM Cloud and Analytics David Provan, IBM Senior IT Specialist, states: “Our hosting team has Solution Components done a lot of work on what we refer to as our private cloud, so we can look at extra volume and provision a new load within three minutes. Data Centres This means we can handle more and better respond to trends, yet keep • IBM POWER7® • IBM AIX6®/Linux control of costs and energy usage.” • IBM System x® x3650’s • • IBM Director Active Energy Manager IBM WebSphere® VE – planned for 2011 A better online Wimbledon experience • IBM WebSphere Application Server v7.0 The AELTC wants to be at the forefront of new innovations that will • IBM WebSphere Message Broker enhance the stakeholder experience. The use of data analytics at the • IBM DB2® v9.5 2011 Championship is a great example of this commitment. • IBM WebSphere Replication Server V9.1 • IBM WebSphere Business Events eXtreme Scale v7.0 • IBM WebSphere MQ 6.0 IBM collects data about every point, game, set and match across the whole tournament. Each individual point played has numerous data Security points associated with it – from the speed of the serve to rally counts, • IBM Proventia® Network Internet Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) from foot faults to whether returns were forehand or backhand etc. • IBM Proventia Management SiteProtector • IBM SiteProtector Security/Fusion Module All of these data points are collected and displayed in real-time, • IBM Proventia Network Anomaly Detection providing a wealth of information to everyone online or at Wimbledon System (ADS) • IBM Tivoli® Security Compliance Manager (TSCM) itself. The BBC can instantly provide data and statistics on every aspect • IBM Rational® Performance Tester (2011 Masters) of the game, enabling commentators to discuss more in-depth statistics • IBM Rational App Scan (2011 Masters) live on air. A coach can also use them to analyse what their player could • IBM Rational Policy Tester (Privacy Module) change to give them a better chance of winning and fans around the Systems Management world get instant access through the web or smartphone apps. • IBM Tivoli Monitoring v6.2 (ITM) w/ Tivoli Enterprise Console® (TEC) • IBM Tivoli Netcool®/OMNIbus Never missing the point • IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager (TPM) – Another solution that allows everyone from fans to press to get more planned for 2011 engaged in The Championship is IBM PointStream – a tool that • IBM Tivoli Usage and Accounting Manager provides real-time insight into what could happen in any given match – planned for 2011 • IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager based on historical data patterns. (ITCAM) for WebSphere • IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager IBM analysts have gathered together five years’ worth of Grand Slam (ITCAM) for Internet Services Monitoring (ISM) • IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager data into a data warehouse (more than 39 million data points) and (ITCAM) for Web servers analysed it using SPSS® predictive analytics software. From this, they • IBM Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery can glean which milestones (‘keys’) need to be achieved by each player Manager (TADDM) in order for them to increase their chance to win. The progress of live • IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Databases • IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON® XE for Messaging matches is then measured against these ‘keys’ to provide additional insight into the momentum and direction of the game. “PointStream Information Management enables more insightful choices by players who can see what they need • IBM Tivoli Data Warehouse (TDW) • IBM DS4800 Storage Area Network (SAN) to achieve in order to beat their opponent and adds to the excitement of those watching the game,” says Alan Flack, IBM Programme Scoring Executive for the Championships. • IBM System x x3650’s • IBM DB2 v9.1 David Provan says: “Ultimately we are taking data and repurposing it Publishing into something that gives people greater insight – in this case to better • IBM System x x3650’s understand the science behind a game of tennis.” • IBM DB2 v9.1 • IBM WebSphere Application Server v6.1 • IBM WebSphere Portal v6.1 IBM is pioneering the use of similar techniques in the business • IBM Lotus® Web Content Management v6.1 environment. If a business can define and present the three (or more) most important aspects or variables that it must focus on – at a particular Staging point in time – in order to achieve an objective, this can have a • IBM DB2 v9.1 significant impact on business performance. 3